I still like the base version as it's more dependable for tanking and getting past DR since you can get Forms outs. With Hunted Naturalist the biggest piece I find is that I trigger Gazelle abilities a lot more.
Just reread this Naturalist guide, what a great resource!
Something I didn’t see pointed out and I think is worth mentioning is that with all [g/r/c] text is optional (in the video game I highly recommend turning the option to activate it automatically off).
The most useful applications for this I’ve found are:
You can choose not to apply the damage boost from Cornered Beast when you deal self damage.
You can choose to selectively turn Environmental Allies immunity on and off. This can be super useful with Cryobot and constructs.
Indomitable Force’s redirection is optional. This can be critical against really high all hero target damage or irreducible damage.
On IOS all the icons for the voluntary card use is shown as a gazelle, I've submitted the bug. It does make it a little harder to keep track of what's happening when you trigger double Natural Form's Power off a Bestial Shift as a triple icon Hunted Naturalist.
Powerhound, I don't know about team composition for you, obviously that changes things a lot. I've had my whole deck in hand as early as turn 4 or 5 with Hunted Naturalist, which is a consequence of hitting so many Primal Charges with the Gazelle icon in effect, but that's using the TLT - AGL - AA combo. The tutor reliability of Transform is good at transitioning from role to role, but I have not had much problem getting into a form (ideally The Deadly Crocodile) relatively early and sticking with it. On that note, although Shifter's Strength is listed as his worst card in the above guide, the fact that you're almost always going to be icon gazelle (for card draw, and because it lacks an inherent bonus so you're not missing out on much) makes Shifter's Strength a critical early card for Hunted Naturalist, since it's basically a -1 card tax to cycle as much of your hand as you don't want at any given time and gazelle ends up with lots of cards. Whenever I don't have Bestial Shift and an Inventive Preparation comes up, I'll throw out a Shifter's Strength in hopes I can fire off a Bestial Shift or Primal Charge (or both) before turn end.
Once the Hunted Naturalist gets the machine going he trades transferring from role to role to fully inhabiting all of the DPR/tank/support roles at once - and, in the case of tanking and DPR, notably better at both than either base form:
- Tank: the mix of gazelle and rhino means a nice armor/healing combo with the added protection of Environmental Allies and its synergy with Blend into the Pack
- DPR: rhino & croc together make Primal Charge a double attack and give you a "Free" power activation off Bestial Shift (base Naturalist has to use Transform between Gazelle and Croc to get the two power activations, which isn't necessarily what you want in all situations, while Desperate Prey gives you a bonus card play or draw which can obviously lead to more damage and can use the other power activation for triple-effect Human Form's Power.)
- while the Hunted Naturalist isn't better at support per se than the base Naturalist, he can incidentally throw off extra cards to other characters while doing DPR and tanking jobs, which other setup characters love.
If you have lots of power uses to throw around you will get a lot of benefit as Hunted Naturalist. If you aren't then the only way you'll get all three icons active is to draw into one of the Forms and if Ongoing destruction occurs you're back to two. Again, it's just my preference of reliability with the base version but I fully understand there are some major benefits of playing Hunted Naturalist with cards like Bestial Shift, Primal Charge, and Natural Form's Power. Mostly I think I soured on Hunted Naturalist from my first play or two where I got wiped out rather quickly without being able to contribute much damage or tank through it since I couldn't pull the Crocodile or Rhino Forms out.
Put Competionist Guise on the team and play both versions… problem solved!
I will say that if (and only if) you've got a large hand I think you're ahead of regular Naturalist in the face of ongoing destruction. Naturalist plays a card the turn after without benefit of having a form, then transforms using his power. Hunted Naturalist plays a form or Shifter's Strength until he gets a form, plays it, then uses his power to get an additional icon and play another card with the benefit of two icons. That seems like a better way to recover to me.
But I get that in group play with others a few bad experiences can sour. I'm playing solo on Ipad and building teams for the fun of interlocking parts is why I play, and base Naturalist doesn't have enough moving parts to interest me. (I also don't have table dynamics to consider and am not forced to sit around with only 3 defeated abilities to contribute until the next game.) I will also say that when I face a foe with mass ongoing destruction or mass equipment destruction I tend to pack Parse/Dark Visionary instead of Tachyon.
I don't have Completionist Guise yet, sadly.
...I never thought that you could activate multiple Bestial Shift texts. Thatr's awesome!
I've played a game where the Naturalist spent most of his time as a Gazelle with Environmental Allies. I think there was a Kraken involved, but don't remember exactly. Whatever it was, it was crucial to our win.
It might be interesting to list out the possible form-changing combos for the Naturalist, to see if there are particularly useful ones.
Yeah, basically the only time I have Gazelle out with regular Naturalist is thanks to that card. With Hunted, though, I might keep Gazelle out longer and alternate his power use between Crocodile and Rhino to set up the triple-activations.
Though generally, Hunted Naturalist for me consists of "draw until you get a form, play it, then reap the triple activations," and frankly the Crocodile is just better for that play style with the +1 to damage.
I find my Hunted Naturalist playstyle changes a lot based on villain and environment. If I’m in Dok’Thorath, Enclave, or Final Wasteland I may choose to play Gazelle. If I’m against a villain with lots of Ongoing destruction (especially unlimited destruction) I’ll stick with the first form I get until the villain destroys it so I can have another in hand when that happens. Otherwise I’ll generally switch to Rhino or Crocodile based on the situation. Of course if I have Visionary, Argent Adept, or Tempest on my team I’m much more willing to switch forms.
I'd add Pike Industrial, the Block, Silver Gulch, and (against trash-manipulating enemies - take that, Chairman!) the Temple of Zhu Long as other top-tier Environmental Allies locations. The non-damaging threats you want to remove from these decks aren't vulnerable to damage anyway, and the damage they spread around to enemies is pretty nice. Of these, Pike Industrial and Final Wasteland are his true stomping grounds - both have ways of proliferating or replenishing environmental cards, which increases their damage output and the effects of Cornered Beast and Blend into the Pack, and both are highly thematic as well. He's clearly the apex predator of the Final Wasteland, while there's nothing quite as Naturalist-ic as Environmental Allies facetanking a huge Chemical Explosion that wipes out the baddies - it's like an episode of Captain Planet!
EDIT - Please ignore Pike Industrial! I'm wrong!
Environmental Allies won't help against a Chemical Explosion. Environmental Allies only prevents damage to hero targets from Environment targets. So the only card Environmental Allies helps with in Pike Industrial is the Lab Rats.
Huh, could have sworn I'd done that. Might be a problem with always running with Legacy and tapping through prompts as quick as possible, confusing Heroic Interception with Environmental Allies.
Heroic Interception doesn't block against non-villain targets.
Yes it does. Everyone outside of Legacy is immune to damage. If Legacy also had Danger Sense out then everyone would be immune to any environment damage that round.
You're probably thinking of Lead from the Front, which is the one that lets Legacy redirect villain damage to himself if he wants.
You're right! I was thinking of Lead from the Front!
I took Hunted Naturalist, along with America's Greatest Legacy, Dark Visionary, and Prime Warden Argent Adept, to my first 4 hero-win over The Advanced Chairman.
Broader Naturalist lessons learned:
- In the same hero round (his own turn + AGL and AA turns combined) the Naturalist did 47 damage, killing both the Operative and Chairman. His DPR is real.
- Rhino-enhanced Indomitable Force + Heroic Interception can provide total damage immunity, as all damage to heroes is redirected to The Naturalist and all non-Legacy characters are immune to damage. Rhino-enhanced Threatening Stomp offers a single-target version of this effect but offers some damage as well.
- I had not been thinking about the breadth of applications for Environmental Allies lowering all damage to environmental targets. But Horrid Skunk-Ape is indiscriminately stinky, so when Environmental Allies kept him from bothering both my heroes AND the entire Final Wasteland deck (played through Con, the Ancient Library, and the Visionary putting Rook City is Mine on top of the Chairman's deck a few times) whilst tooting on the Chairman's army at will I started wondering about other applications. I could see playing double Environmental Allies in the Dok'Thorath Capital to protect the Refugees and Looters from the Military and Ravagers, or perhaps to lock out all damage with Jansa + Immutus in the Enclave (just make sure you've got some hard environmental removal in hand for when you're ready to pop him, 35 hp with 3 points of armor is a long slog).
- You can use Natural Form's Power on AA's turn to use 4 Silver Shadows if he's got fewer than 2 cards left in deck + trash before his turn. The Silver Shadows go to the trash after the play a card phase, at which point you can use: Harp (Supertonic + Alacritous) -> Drum (Inventive Prep) -> Bestial Shift (gazelle power and croc power x2 Natural Form's Power to redraw Silver Shadow, could sub one out for a Desperate Prey -> Primal Charge if Silver Shadows are only thing in trash) -> Drum Melody -> Horn (alacritous) -> bell (alacritous) -> Lyra (Alacritious Perform to trigger drawn Silver Shadows x2). Net yield - the other Natural Form's Power effects from Naturalist, 5 Inventive Preps, 2 non-Silver Shadow card plays from AA, 2 Melodies, a Rhythm perform.
Pike may only provide Rats as possible Allies, but "Blend into the pack does not discriminate. And with a little help from the healing vats, Naturalist can become one of the best tanks on the field. I had a Vengeance game recently (La Capitan-Best of times Chrono-Hammer and Anvil-Visionary[can't remember what version]-Ambuscade-Naturalist[me]-Fright Train-Bunker in Pike). Late game not only was I untouchable and healing like crazy, I was tanking almost every peice of damage being thrown out. Unfortunatly that didn't save Visionary, but the rest of our team managed to make it out alive and in the higher numbers of HP. And yes, one or two explosions did go off, but a set-up Naturalist can recover from that quite easily.
Blend Into the Pack helps in most environments (Freedom Tower making it pointless along with Environmental Allies) and if I don't have better options I'll play it immediately especially on the first turn. However, it only reduces damage for the first hit you might take and if there are multiple instances of damage you don't get that extra protection.
Bestial Shift does stack, so a first position Hunted Naturalist can assemble quite impressive damage reduction from off-turn plays. You won't have 3 forms up during your own turn and you'll want Crocodile and Gazelle first to maximize your Bestial Shift power usage, but even just a couple Bestial Shifts + Indomitable Force and Resilient Hide can block out most of the damage the game gives out.
Though I've sort of burned myself out again - I really like Hunted Naturalist (Environmental Allies is amazing when you don't have to give up damage or tanking for it) but he is on the whole far too strong (from experience and from the Naive Bayes chart I recently found) with off-turn plays and not very fun without them. I won a three player game with Hunted Naturalist, Greatest Legacy, and PW Argent Adept against Advanced Kaargra Warfang 20-13. I'm probably taking a break until some more new characters come out, such as Requital Captain Cosmic or the OblivAeon playable villains, or at least going back to working on Santa Guise combos.